Summary

This enactment amends the Criminal Code to provide for the imposition of penal sanctions for persons who, in Canada or outside Canada, are knowingly involved in the medical transplant of human organs or other body parts obtained or acquired as a consequence of a direct or indirect financial transaction or without the donor’s consent. It also amends the Immigration and Refugee Protection Act to impose sanctions on individuals in respect of whom there are reasonable grounds to believe that they were engaged in the trafficking and transplanting of human organs or other body parts by providing that they are inadmissible for the purposes of entering or remaining in Canada.

Mr. Speaker, I rise today to reintroduce a bill proposed by the Hon. Irwin Cotler. I also want to recognize the member for Etobicoke Centre, who is seconding this bill. I know he has had previous legislation proposed at previous Parliaments along these same lines.

This bill seeks to combat the scourge of forced organ harvesting, when organs are taken from people against their will, often gruesomely and without anaesthetic and while a person is still living, and often when the individual's only so-called crime is engaging in a particular religious or spiritual practice.

As the government seeks to deepen Canada's relationship with China, this bill is needed now more than ever. This bill would make it a criminal offence for a person to acquire an organ that they know or ought to know was acquired without consent.

It introduces the appropriate reporting mechanisms to ensure that there is always consent given. It further addresses the inadmissibility to Canada of those involved in forced organ harvesting. This bill is well designed to ensure that Canadians can still go abroad to receive organs, provided they take the simple steps required to ensure consent and an absence of exploitation.

This bill addresses a clear case in which the law has not kept up with the realities on the ground. This issue has been repeatedly raised here, but never fully addressed. Let us be the Parliament that gets it done.